Dhampir
by Talia of Eragon
Summary: Sometimes there is a fine line between a punishment and a blessing. Alucard x Integra


**_Disclaimer_**___ I own no part of Hellsing. I just like to burrow the characters for my own amusement._

**_Author's Notes_**___ I am aware that only virgins can be transformed into vampires in the Manga-verse of Hellsing. That doesn't seem to be the case in the first anime. Either way, I figure that if a vampire really wanted to change a non-virgin into a vampire, they could find a way—whether through an exchange of blood, or a massive transfusion, or something of the like. Also, I want to give a special thank you to my beta reader, yamivampyre for doing such great work!_

**Dhampir**

Integral stared at herself in her cracked bathroom mirror for several minutes, lost in thought as she studied her eyes and the very stark lines of stress gathering between her brows. She leaned against the sink, her teeth grinding as a fresh wave of nausea came upon her. She turned quickly, throwing the lid and seat of her toilet up before hitting her knees and retching once again into the porcelain bowl. Little resulted outside of dry heaving considering she'd already emptied the contents of her stomach twice within the hour. When it seemed to be over she pushed herself up again, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before returning to her previous position staring into the mirror.

How could this have happened? How was it even possible?

She glanced at the offending piece of plastic that sat on the edge of the sink.

She closed her eyes, her brows knitting as she bowed her head. She thought back to that night over a month ago—the night that Walter's betrayal was revealed—the night that she released Alucard's power—that night when Hell ran rampant on the Earth. Alucard killed Walter, the man she had always seen as a second father-figure, by her own orders. She had tried to dispatch the bastards that had stolen Walter from her, and was nearly killed in the process. Alucard narrowly saved her and hurried her away to a safe area outside of the London disaster, the Hellsing Headquarters being too obvious a target to be considered safe.

Alone with him standing guard she had broken down from the stress of ten years running her organization, of everything seemingly falling apart in the span of one night, of the loss of her oldest friend. In one of his extremely rare displays of compassion, Alucard comforted her. And in her weakness she gave into him after ten years of holding him at bay.

Was this some sort of cosmic punishment?

Rage bubbled to the surface as the sick irony of the situation hit her. She snatched the plastic baton up in her right hand, her left reaching into the pocket of her robe to retrieve her lighter. Her shaking hands flicked a flame to life and attempted to set the evidence on fire. The plastic refused to burn and simply contorted out of shape. With a strangled cry she threw the offending plastic into the sink and flung the metal lighter as hard as she could at the bathroom door. It hit hard, the force breaking the lighter into several pieces, leaving a welt in the door's wood.

Tears welled in her eyes before streaming down her cheeks. She slapped the toilet lid down again and sat down hard, burying her face in her hands, her fingers sliding under her glasses to press against her eyes.

How could this have happened?

"What troubles you, my Master."

_Of course_, she thought. _What perfect timing…_

"Go away, Alucard," she said sternly without looking up.

"I cannot do that, my Master," he replied coolly. "I felt your distress and it roused me from my sleep."

A sound akin to a snarl escaped her throat as she snapped her head up to face him. As usual he had not entered her abode like a man, but as a shadow, the door still locked behind him from the inside. "Get out. I can't deal with you right now."

She couldn't help but notice the expression on his face was much different than anything she'd seen before—a strange mix of curiosity and worry. Could it be that her pet was actually confused? Well, she didn't blame him. She was pretty damn well confused herself.

His expression became steely and he dropped the air of the obedient servant. "What is wrong with you, Integra?" She lowered her head and stared forward, avoiding his gaze. "I know something is wrong. Your scent has been different…" He took a step forward, noticing the mangled plastic in the sink. He reached out and lifted it in his gloved fingers. His brows knitted as he studied the plastic. It was mangled and blackened at one end, but he could still see a tiny pink plus sign through a small window in the plastic.

"Integra," he muttered. "Is this what I think it is?" He looked at her and she returned the look with a cold glare. His gaze darkened. "Whose is it?"

She snorted, "Well, considering I was a virgin two months ago and the only man I've slept with is standing in the room, unless I'm carrying the second coming of Christ, I'd say that narrows it down to _yours_."

"Do you take me to be a fool?" he growled. "You know that's impossible."

Her own rage returned. "Do you think I don't know that!?!" she screamed as she leapt to her feet again, tears streaming down her face. "Do you actually think that I don't _know_ it's bloody impossible!?!" She clutched at her nightgown, bunching the fabric over her stomach. "Do you think that I don't know that vampires are sterile!?!" Her face twisted into a grimace, the volume of her voice falling to a pained whisper, "This is some sort of punishment. This is some sort of punishment for betraying my family…"

She stared blankly out in front of her, not focusing on anything in particular. Alucard moved forward, dropping the burnt pregnancy test to the floor. He had stopped listening to her voice in favor of studying her body's scent. She put her face in her hands again as he placed his own on her shoulders. His brows were knit with concentration, wonder slowly beginning to creep into his eyes.

"I need to get rid of it…" she muttered.

His attention instantly snapped back to her.

"No," he said firmly.

She glared up at him, "How dare you try to question what I do with my own body!" she pushed hard against his chest, unable to move him. She then broke into sobs and clutched his red duster, burying her face. "There's something _dead_ growing inside of me…" she wailed. "I can't—"

"You can't abort it," he said again. "You're wrong…" He pulled her closer, placing one hand on top of her head, as if shielding her from what he was about to say. His eyes widened with his own shock as he spoke. "You can't get rid of it… There's a heartbeat." She tensed in his arms. "It's faint… and it's slow… but it's _there_." He stroked her hair. "Whatever it is, it's alive—and it's _ours_."

Alucard slowly sunk to his knees before her. She stood shaking as his hands glided over her arms and her hips before he pressed first his forehead and then the side of his face to her abdomen. She tangled her fingers in his hair as he listened against her flat stomach to the tiny creature inside her womb.

Of course, Alucard had never been one for children—it wasn't exactly a vampire's purgative, after all. But this was different. This, whatever it was, was literally a miracle. He was dead. His seed was dead. He could not father children. But he also knew that Integral spoke the truth. She had slept with no one other than him, and so it could only be his child growing inside her.

"What should I do?" Integral whispered.

"I don't know," Alucard admitted. "But you can't kill it." A wave of protectiveness washed over him as he looked up at her, "It's _mine_, Integra."

Her face contorted with the stress of the situation, "But what _is_ it? Is it human? A vampire? Or some other kind of monster?"

"I don't know," he said again. "But it's _mine_, Integra. Just as much as you are—and that's all that I care about."

Her knees finally gave out from under her and she fell into his arms. She rested her forehead against his shoulder and he pulled the woman he'd considered his mate for ten years closer to him. He pressed his cool lips to her ear, "It will be ok. I'm here, Integra. It will be ok. This is nothing compared to what you've already faced," a grin spread across his face as the foreign idea of a child started to truly settle into his mind, "And now you have your Hellsing heir to boss me around."

She hiccupped into his shoulder as she attempted to laugh. He was reminded of when she was a child, when she would try to act so grown up to everyone around her, and then turn into a bundle of nerves and tears when she thought she was alone. He placed his hand firmly on her lower back, his vampiric senses actually able to feel the vibrations made by the tiny creature's primitive heart as it beat. "This isn't a punishment, Integra. It's a miracle." He took her chin in his hand and pulled her to look into his garnet eyes. "This child isn't the destruction of your organization, it could very well be the way to cement its success."

She stared at him blankly; numb from all of the emotions she'd been feeling in the last two months. He closed the distance between them, pressing his cool lips to hers, much like he had that night of Walter's betrayal. _Mine_, he thought silently, whispering to the corners of her mind. _Both of you are mine._

………………….

Dhampir. That was what her son was called.

Upon Alucard's insistence that the child was, in fact, alive, she had done everything in her power to research the situation, to find any kind of record of a similar occurrence. All she found in the Hellsing records—at least the parts that were not destroyed in the attack on London—were a few lines in a journal of her great-great-grandfather. Even then, it was not a statement about anything the man had actually seen, simply a rumor. But the bottom line was, her son was a dhampir, the resulting child of a mating between a vampire and a human woman. The specific reason they were so rare, to the point of having nothing but shreds of evidence of their existence, was because vampires seldom slept with humans before transforming them, and if they did, they rarely left them alive long enough to become pregnant. Furthermore, if they did become pregnant the transformation process inevitably caused a miscarriage.

Integral held the small bundle close to her in her make-shift recovery room. Aside from his pale skin and slightly cool body temperature, her son seemed completely human. Neither she nor Alucard knew what was in store for the child. They didn't know how he would grow, or what sort of powers he might have, if any. They had assumed that the child would have some vampiric traits, perhaps telepathy, hopefully regeneration. But they still had no idea.

The child was a secret, or at least his paternity was. The only person other than she and Alucard who knew the truth was Seras Victoria, and of course there was no danger with Seras. Integral had just given birth earlier that day, in the rebuilt medical center of the Hellsing headquarters. Alucard had watched from the shadows. No one had known he was there except her. She was glad for that. The new employees that she had taken on after the destruction of the organization had no idea of her relationship with the organization's pet vampire, and she preferred to keep it that way. She had worried that when the child was born his appearance would give the secret away, but it didn't.

The baby slept quietly in her arms, much more still than she had imagined a newborn to be. He had dark wavy brown hair that stood up at awkward angles due to its thickness. She wasn't sure how she felt about being a mother. She still, even after nine months of carrying him, didn't feel very motherly. Granted, she knew without a doubt that if anyone—or anything as it were—would threaten him she would tear them into a bloody pulp, or die trying. She smirked; leave her to dive instantly to the violent part of motherhood. She had the sneaking suspicion crawling around the back of her mind that Seras was going to be more of a mother figure to her son than she herself was.

She felt Alucard enter the room from the shadows. He materialized beside her, clad in his normal red duster, and gray suit. He grinned at her with his normal insane smile, although it had taken on a new layer of meaning within the last year. He leaned over the bed to stare down at his son. She had asked him at one point if he had fathered children during his life. He had sneered at the question and replied that he was sure he had fathered quite a few bastards in his mortal life, but that he had never had any confirmation. She had scowled at him, making him grin even wider at her.

"He has my hair," Alucard said as he continued to grin. He wore his normal orange glasses, and the inability to see the expression in his eyes as he grinned at their son unsettled her.

"Take those bloody spectacles off. You look like you're thinking about eating him."

He chuckled, "Isn't that what some humans say about their young though?" he asked as he removed the shades.

"Sometimes I find it hard to believe that you really are a five hundred year old monster—you act like an immature teenager."

Alucard grasped her chin with his gloved fingers and pulled her face to look at him, "Ah, but being serious all the time is so tiring." However, even as he said that she could see his eyes take on a serious look. "You did very well, Integra. I've seen women in childbirth before. You did very well. I wish I could have been of more help." His lips grazed hers briefly before looking back down at the baby. He reached the same hand out and brushed his fingers across the baby's forehead.

The boy wriggled in Integral's arms, bringing his tiny hands up to rub against his forehead before he let out a yawn far too big for a child so small, revealing four ever so tiny white pricks protruding from his gums.

"Ho ho," Alucard chuckled. "Look at that, he already has fangs."

Integral scowled, "Well, I suppose that rules out breastfeeding…"

Alucard laughed at her comment. "What are we calling him?"

"I don't know." She smirked, "How about Abraham."

"That's not funny," he growled.

She continued to smirk, lifting her hand to stroke the baby's hair.

"Damien."

"Hmm…" she muttered, knitting her brows, "Isn't that the name of the antichrist in that American movie, _The Omen_?"

He chuckled, "Well, if so that ought to fit—after all there _have_ been quite a few people who have seen me as the devil. But more than that, the name means 'to tame.' And I think that fits."

Integral genuinely smiled, thinking of that lyric her pet always recited, 'The bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame.' This child was probably yet another way for her to hold his reins. He was right. It did fit.

"Well, just so long as my men don't decide to start committing mass suicides. Of course, we could always call him 'D' for short."

"Then Damien it is," he said. He held is fingers out and took hold of the tiny digits of his son's hand, "So, son, when will you be ready to start hunting with me?"

Integral scoffed, "Only six hours old and you're already wanting to take him out on the battlefield—how nurturing of you, Alucard."

He grinned broadly as his son's hand closed over the cloth-covered digit, "I can already tell, Integra. He's going to be a hunter, and a damn good one at that."

She smirked, "Well, he is a Hellsing after all."

"Let's make another one."

She jerked her head toward him and glared, "NO."

He grinned, "As you wish, my Master." He leaned in an caught her lips with his own again.

_**Secondary Disclaimer**: I don't own any part of Vampire Hunter D either. (That would be the little fanged baby at the end.)_


End file.
